Currently, a DM uniform specification is formulated. A DM system provides a low-cost solution for a third party to manage and set terminal devices, for example, to manage and set environment and configuration information in each function object of a mobile terminal, and solve problems encountered in a use process of these terminal devices. Taking an example for illustration, a server performs device management operations, such as installation and upgrading of software and firmware, on a terminal device in a wireless network (OTA, Over the Air) manner, so as to provide a more humanized and personalized service and improve user experience in use of the terminal device. Here, the third party may be a server provided by a carrier, a service provider, or a cooperation partner.
FIG. 1 is a schematic structural diagram of a DM system in the prior art. The DM system includes a server and a terminal device, where
the server is configured to send a management command to the terminal device through a device management interface; and
the terminal device is configured to receive the management command from the server and execute the received management command.
The terminal device provides, on itself, a client and a management object (MO, Management Object). The client parses the received management command and instructs the management object to execute the management command. The management object is stored by adopting a tree structure, where each branch may be considered as an interface for the server to manage the terminal device and is used for forwarding these management commands in the terminal device. These management commands may be acquire commands, substitute commands, execute commands, copy commands or delete commands.
With the development of technologies, a method for a server to perform device management on a terminal device in a local area network through a gateway (GW, Gateway) also exists, where the server and the gateway both conform to the DM specification, the server may manage the gateway through a DM protocol, and the gateway may also manage the terminal device through the DM protocol or other device management protocols. In the gateway, information about a terminal device governed in the local area network may be saved. The server indirectly manages the terminal device by managing the gateway. At this time, the gateway is a terminal device to the server, and the gateway is a server to the terminal device under the gateway. Therefore, the gateway is referred to as a proxy server.
Before the gateway, as a proxy server, performs DM on the terminal device, the server needs to perform a bootstrap process on the gateway, and the gateway needs to perform a bootstrap process on the terminal device, so as to perform subsequent device management.
The bootstrap (BootStrap) process refers to a process of endowing a device with a capability of initiating a management session with a DM server. An unbootstrapped device cannot directly perform a DM session with the server.
For the current DM specification, four manners of performing a bootstrap exist, which are illustrated in the following, respectively.
A first bootstrap manner the bootstrap process has been accomplished before the gateway and the terminal device are delivered from a factory.
A second bootstrap manner: a function card (Smartcard) storing bootstrap information is provided, and after the terminal device physically connects the Smartcard to itself, the terminal device acquires the bootstrap information from the Smartcard and adopts the acquired bootstrap information to accomplish the bootstrap process.
A third bootstrap manner: the server acquires a terminal device identifier, for example, a terminal device number or address, and then sends bootstrap information to a terminal device having the terminal device identifier, and the terminal device adopts the received bootstrap information to accomplish the bootstrap process. The terminal device identifier here is sent to the server when a user using the terminal device actively registers, or is send to the server when the terminal device just accesses a mobile network where the server is located. The server can determine the terminal device according to the terminal device identifier.
A fourth bootstrap manner: the terminal device supports a hypertext transfer (HTTPs, Hypertext Transfer Protocol over Secure Socket Layer) protocol, and the terminal device uses a uniform resource locator (URL, Uniform resource locator) to access the server in an HTTPS protocol acquisition mode, acquires bootstrap information, and adopts the acquired bootstrap information to accomplish the bootstrap process.
In the four bootstrap manners, the first manner is a manner of bootstrapping the gateway before the gateway is delivered from the factory. However, if a terminal device governed by the gateway is under device management of multiple servers, bootstrap settings corresponding to all the servers cannot be set for the gateway before the gateway is delivered from the factory. Therefore, the latter three bootstrap manners need to be adopted. However, in the latter three bootstrap manners, the terminal device accomplishes the bootstrap process by itself after acquiring the bootstrap information, and how the gateway accomplishes a bootstrap is not involved.
Therefore, how the gateway accomplishes the bootstrap process in the device management system is still a problem to be solved urgently.